Never before has information been so accessible and news shared so quickly. The advent of social media affords every individual with a Twitter, Instagram or Facebook account the opportunity to share, opine, report or create news. Mainstream news networks find themselves behind the curve when it comes to the timeliness of informing a watching world.
The cataclysm of information overload we experience in the American 21st century has instigated a news media that emphasizes the sensational, macabre, controversial or titillating.
And because news today is “big business,” the sensationalized news headlines and commentary bracketed by commercials on television or advertisements in print trivialize the importance of the news stories and elevate the commercial to the level of news. In other words, the great majority of “news” in our day and age is business rather than helpful analysis.
According to Neil Postman and Steve Powers in their timely book How to Watch the TV News, “The news paradigm shifted again just as suddenly with the advent of the digital delivery of information. A wild dance of zeros and ones shot through wires made of metal and glass and sped through space not just to our television screens but to an array of devices… Now, instead of information only flowing one way from the gatekeepers to the public, the news poured onto the Internet and spread like a blot absorbed by the world.”
We are living in an age where news breaks on social media, where journalists have an agenda, and where news sites are too often less than trustworthy.
But in our very own state, we have a news outlet that we can trust and content that is based on the good news. That is the Biblical Recorder (BR), where “News is our Process. Trust is our Product.”
Inside this news and media culture, Christians – and in particular, North Carolina Baptists – need to recover our sense of discernment when it comes to news analysis. Our identity as followers of Jesus reflects several reminders with regard to news interpretation and analysis.
First, we are uniquely a people of the news. While much of what is news today is merely reporting a recent event, the idea of news is much broader. The euangellion is the “good news” regarding the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. This “good news” will forever be novel in the sense of unique and newsworthy.
Because our gospel is the “good news,” we must strive to retain credibility and trustworthiness in our character. This is true of us as individual Christians. We must not share “fake” news and should not buy into “conspiracy theories” that distort the truth. We need news sources that we can trust.
Second, we are a people who retain the tools for discerning the news. Voices cry out across the American landscape for justice. Events, politics and circumstances that drive the narratives of the news media are not interpreted from a position of neutrality. But we as Christians need not fear bias or the narratives promulgated through news networks.
We claim to be people of the truth. And as followers of Jesus who retain the source of truth, “the Bible as delegated authority” from the lips of God himself, we have a framework for discerning truth, justice, mercy and reality.
Third, as people of the Word, we should not neglect our responsibility to analyze and evaluate language and words. We ought to be image skeptical and word analyzers. We are people of the Word, who have a unique privilege and responsibility with words.
Much news today streams across our feeds, screens and social media apps. Much of what purports today as news is image-driven and trivial in nature. In How to Watch TV News, Postman and Powers critique news on television from this perspective. They observe that in one segment of national news, the anchor covers a global catastrophe. Then the next segment addresses a congressional stalemate.
Before going to commercial, the anchor teases the next segment, a political scandal. Immediately following the news segment, commercials play. When viewed as a whole, either the news has become “trivialized” by the bracketing of commercials or the news has become more “entertainment” than event analysis.
The advent of social media as a news outlet adds a whole other level of triviality to its immediacy. Here is the word of caution. If we lose the logical, rational and even spiritual analysis of news, events and circumstances in print and in words, we lose something we may never recover.
This is where I believe the BR has immense value. As a news outlet, the BR is committed to being trustworthy and avoiding the trap of sensationalism. What you read from the BR can be trusted.
Philosophically, N.C. Baptists specifically and Southern Baptists in general, need news outlets that will report, interpret and disseminate true, important and trustworthy stories.
Practically, N.C. Baptists and Southern Baptists need a news outlet largely independent from the stories in Baptist life.
Personally, N.C. Baptists need a news outlet where the information shared is largely positive and intentionally informative.
That is the Biblical Recorder. It is your news outlet.
We would love your feedback during the interim while we are searching for our next executive editor. Reach out to any of the board of directors or the BR staff. Pray for us during the search. Share what you read from the website and social media and subscribe others to the magazine.
(EDITOR’S NOTE – Chris Hefner is chairman of the Biblical Recorder’s board of directors. This article is a summary of his report to the annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina in November 2021.)
